Mass Transfer Approval Requests
A Mass Transfer Approval Requests tool is a Salesforce Setup page that lets an administrator reassign pending approval requests in bulk from one user to another.
Definition
A Mass Transfer Approval Requests tool is a Salesforce Setup page that lets an administrator reassign pending approval requests in bulk from one user to another. It exists for a narrow operational problem. When an approver leaves the company, changes role, or goes on extended leave, the requests sitting in their queue stop moving. Without a bulk option, each pending request has to be reassigned by hand, one record at a time, which does not scale for busy approval workflows.
The tool acts only on pending requests. Approved or rejected requests have already completed a step, so their history is fixed and cannot be rewritten through this path. A transfer keeps the rest of the chain intact. The original submitter, the submission date, and any earlier approver actions stay the same, and only the current pending step moves to the new approver. That preserves a clean audit trail for compliance reviews that need to reconstruct who approved what.
How the bulk transfer works end to end
The three events that trigger a transfer
Three situations account for almost every use of this tool. The first is departure. A user leaves the company and their pending approvals would otherwise sit untouched in a queue nobody owns. The second is a role change that moves approval responsibility to a different person, leaving the old approver still attached to in-flight requests. The third is an extended absence such as parental leave or a sabbatical, where the business cannot wait for the approver to return before requests advance. In all three, the standard one-record-at-a-time reassignment through the UI is impractical for any real volume. An admin facing dozens or hundreds of stuck requests needs a single operation, not a long afternoon of clicking. This is also why the tool lives in Setup rather than on a record page. It is an administrative cleanup action, not something an end user performs on their own work. Recognizing which of the three events you are dealing with matters, because a one-time departure calls for this tool, while a recurring pattern like vacation coverage is better solved with delegation, covered later in this entry.
Finding and running the tool in Setup
You reach the tool from Setup. Type Mass Transfer Approval Requests into the Quick Find box and open the page. Click Find to list the pending approval requests that match. From there you choose the option labeled Mass transfer outstanding approval requests to a new user, then search for and select the user who will receive them. Next you select each approval request you want to move. You are not forced to take everything the search returned, so you can transfer a subset if only some requests belong to the new owner. You can add a comment, which is recorded in the Approval History related list on each affected record, a useful place to note why the transfer happened. Finally you click Transfer to commit the change. The whole flow is deliberately manual at the selection step. Salesforce shows you the candidate requests first and makes you pick before anything moves, which acts as a built-in confirmation against transferring the wrong items.
Why the recipient must be able to edit the records
The single most overlooked requirement is that the new approver needs permission to edit the records tied to the approval requests. An approval request does not live in isolation. It is attached to a record such as an Opportunity, a Contract, or a custom object row, and approving or rejecting it touches that record. If the receiving user cannot edit the underlying record, the transfer leaves them holding requests they cannot actually act on, and the workflow stalls again under a new name. Before you transfer, confirm the recipient has the right object and record-level access through their profile, permission sets, sharing rules, or role hierarchy. This is also why the admin running the tool needs broad access. Reassigning another user's approval work is an administrative operation, so the tool sits behind administrative permission and is not exposed to standard profiles. Treat access as a two-sided check: the admin to run the transfer, and the recipient to honor the approvals once they arrive.
What the transfer preserves, and what it does not
A transfer is surgical. It changes who owns the current pending step and nothing else about the history. The Process Instance, which represents the in-flight approval, keeps its original submitter and submission timestamp. The ProcessInstanceStep records for steps that already completed are untouched, so prior approver names and decisions remain readable. Only the active step's assignment shifts to the new approver. What the transfer does not do is reach backward. It cannot undo or re-route a step that already finished, and it cannot resurrect an approval that was already approved or rejected. If you transfer in the wrong direction, there is no single undo button. You correct it by running the tool again and moving the requests back, which is workable but adds steps. Because of that, the selection screen is the moment to slow down. Confirm the count of requests and a sample of the records look right before you commit, since a careful check up front is cheaper than a reverse transfer afterward.
Notifications and the new approver experience
Once a request moves, the new approver is brought into the loop the normal way. Pending approvals appear in their Items To Approve related list, and depending on each user's Receive Approval Request Emails preference they may also get an email notification with a link to act on the request. The original approver is not specially alerted that their items were taken away, so if context matters, the comment field on the transfer or a direct message is worth using. It is also worth checking the recipient's email preference on their User record. If it is set so they only receive emails when they personally are the approver, the transferred items still show in their list, but the email behavior follows that setting. For teams that lean on email to drive approvals rather than checking a list, aligning that preference before the transfer avoids a silent backlog where requests have moved but the new owner never noticed.
Delegation as the answer for recurring coverage
Mass Transfer Approval Requests is built for one-time, event-driven moves. When responsibility shifts on a schedule, vacation coverage, an on-call rotation, or a manager who routinely wants a backup, the better tool is the Delegated Approver field on the User record. Each user can name a delegate who is allowed to approve on their behalf, and the delegate works the same pending queue without any bulk reassignment. The two mechanisms are independent. A manually transferred request does not flow through the delegation chain, and a delegate relationship does not retroactively move already-pending items. So the rule of thumb is simple. Use Delegated Approver to prevent requests from getting stuck in the first place during planned absences, and reserve Mass Transfer for the unplanned cleanup after someone has already left or changed roles with a queue full of pending work. Knowing which problem you have keeps you from reaching for a one-time cleanup tool to solve a recurring scheduling need.
How to transfer pending approval requests in bulk
Use this when pending approval requests are stuck because their current approver has left, changed role, or is on extended leave, and you need to hand them to someone else in one operation. You run it from Setup with administrative access.
- Open the tool
From Setup, type Mass Transfer Approval Requests into the Quick Find box and open the page.
- List the pending requests
Click Find to display the pending approval requests, then review the count and a few sample records to confirm you are looking at the right set.
- Pick the new approver
Select Mass transfer outstanding approval requests to a new user, then search for and choose the user who will receive the requests. Confirm that user can edit the underlying records.
- Select and transfer
Select each request you want to move, add an optional comment for the Approval History, then click Transfer to commit the reassignment.
The user who will own the pending requests after the transfer. They must have edit access to the records the requests are attached to.
Optional note saved to the Approval History related list on each transferred record, useful for recording why the reassignment happened.
You choose individual requests from the Find results, so you can move all of them or only a subset that belongs to the new owner.
- Only pending requests can be transferred. Approved or rejected requests are already complete and cannot be reassigned through this tool.
- If the recipient cannot edit the records tied to the requests, the workflow stalls again under a new owner. Verify their access first.
- There is no one-click undo. To reverse a transfer you rerun the tool and move the requests back, so confirm your selection before committing.
- For planned, recurring coverage use the Delegated Approver field on the User record instead of repeatedly running this tool.
Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to Mass Transfer Approval Requests in Salesforce, step by step
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Mass Transfer Approval Requests.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Mass Transfer Approval Requests.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. What does the Mass Transfer Approval Requests tool reassign in bulk?
Q2. Which approval requests can the Mass Transfer Approval Requests tool act on?
Q3. For ongoing coverage like vacations rather than one-time event reassignment, what is the proper alternative to Mass Transfer Approval Requests?
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